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Shields Finishes What He Starts

One consistent component of manager Joe Maddon’s successful formula for the Tampa Bay Rays has been a healthy, young starting pitching staff. That only makes James Shields’s remarkable 2011 season more unlikely.

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James Shields finished what he started more often than any other starter in more than a decade.

Shields, the 29-year-old starter who joined the Rays the same year Maddon did, made 151 starts in his first five Tampa Bay seasons. He completed five of them. This year, he made 33 starts and completed 11 of them – the most complete games by a pitcher in either league since Randy Johnson completed 12 in 1999 for the Diamondbacks. Only three of the 29 teams other than the Rays had as many complete games as Shields had by himself this season. Shields is scheduled to start Game 2of Tampa Bay’s series against the Rangers on Saturday.

After the second of his three straight complete games in June, Shields told the St. Petersburg Times: “Over the last couple years, I haven’t had any CGs, and this year, I told Joe, I said, ‘I’m ready to finish some ballgames.’ ”

The surge in complete games isn’t just anomalous for Shields; it’s a departure for a Maddon-led team. In Maddon’s first five seasons combined, his staff had just 21 complete games, or fewer than twice the number Shields had by himself this year. In four of those five seasons, the Rays ranked in the bottom half of the AL in complete games. Overall in those five years, Rays starters completed one of every 38.6 games. In the rest of the AL, the rate was one CG per 29.8 starts. This year, Shields by himself completed one game for every 14.7 starts by any Rays pitcher.

Maddon’s philosophy, excepting Shields in 2011, has had some downsides for his pitchers and their individual glory. Only David Price, last year, collected more than 16 wins in a season, and he has been the only Rays pitcher in the Maddon era to collect any major support in AL Cy Young voting, finishing second last year. (Closer Rafael Soriano got 3% of possible voting points last year, and no other Rays pitcher since 2006 received any.) Shields may get some votes this year, but Detroit’s Justin Verlander is the surefire winner, and a deserving one. The Rays pitching staff has been very good during its run of three playoff appearances in the last four years, finishing with an ERA+ of at least 100 each season, meaning it was at or above average in preventing earned runs after adjusting for stadium effects. Yet it likely will have just four first-place votes in the Cy Young race over the four years to show for it.

But Maddon’s general approach is a sound one for his team for two reasons. First, starting pitchers tend to have far less success later in games than their first couple of times through the lineup. The first time AL starting pitchers faced batters in a game this season, the batters’ OPS+ — on-base percentage plus slugging percentage — was 93, meaning their OPS was 7% lower than average. The second time through the lineup, batters’ OPS+ was 103. And the third time, it was 113. (It dipped the fourth time through, but that’s likely a result of selective sampling: Typically, only good pitchers in good form get a fourth go-around.)

Also, Tampa Bay has kept its young starters healthy in recent seasons, perhaps in part because they haven’t been pushed to stay late in games. In the two seasons in which Tampa Bay won the AL East, it had five starters with 25 or more starts. Just six other teams accomplished that in a season since 2006, and three of them won their division and at least 94 games. A fourth won 90 games. This year, Tampa Bay had four such starters, which is more starters with at least 25 starts than most AL teams since Maddon’s arrival in Tampa Bay.

Shields was an exception because he earned it, pitching better later in games and staying healthy and effective even after racking up all those complete games. Opposing batters had an OPS 5% better than the average OPS against Shields the first two times they faced him, but that dropped to 5% worse the third time they faced him, and a remarkable 16% worse in their fourth plate appearance.

And Shields showed no ill effects from the heavy workload late in the season, lasting at least seven innings in each of his 11 starts in August and September, while lowering his ERA from 3.03 to 2.82.

One caveat for Tampa Bay: Other recent pitchers who racked up complete games struggled in the postseason. Over the last 20 years, five other such pitchers appeared in the playoffs. But only one — Greg Maddux, in 1995 — won a postseason game. Maddux also was the only one in the bunch to get a complete game in the playoffs. As a group, the five pitchers went 3-10 in the playoffs after a season in which they collected 10 complete games. They had a combined ERA of 4.40.

The good news for Tampa Bay is that these results may be fluky, rather than an indication of damaged arms: Just before the period covered, in 1991, Dave Stewart and Jack Morris followed up seasons with at least 10 CG by going a combined 6-2 with a 2.07 ERA and two complete games in the playoffs.

Also, Shields hasn’t put on as much mileage as his complete-game total would suggest, because he has been so efficient. Though he has thrown 11 more complete games and 46 more innings than last season, he faced only 8% more batters and threw just 7% more pitches. He did have five games with at least 120 pitches, half the total number for all Rays pitchers in the five prior seasons, and he peaked at 126 pitches in a three-hitter on May 22. That’s the highest total for any Tampa Bay pitcher in the Maddon era. But 126 pitches still isn’t much: All but two other AL teams, Baltimore and Cleveland, have had at least one start go longer since 2006, and Verlander had nine by himself. Even with his majors-leading complete-game total, Shields ranked just eighth in the AL in pitches and had 365 fewer than Verlander. If Shields gets shelled by Texas, it’ll have more to do with the Rangers’ majors-leading home offense than with Shields’s regular-season workload.

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